Spain

A speech delivered in prison in 1920 by Salvador Seguí, a major, and complex, figure in the early history of the CNT: a proponent of alliances with other trade union and political groups, yet also a militant strike leader who spent years of his life behind bars; an opponent of unconditional membership in the Red Trade Union International in 1919, yet also a supporter of the CNT’s 1922 Zaragoza Declaration, according to which the “totally revolutionary” CNT is “absolutely political” by virtue of its far-reaching social goals; an advocate of more intellectual training for trade union militants and a harsh critic of the increasingly more popular exemplary actions, he was assassinated in 1923.

A very short pamphlet written jointly by the Belgian LCI (League of Communist Internationalists) and IARV (Union of International Council Workers), and the Dutch GIK (Group of International Communists) and Proletenstemmen (Proletarian Voice), a 'working group' linked to the latter, about the developments of the Spanish civil war.

An article written by the German council communist Helmut Wagner in April 1937 criticizing extensively the political developments in Spain during the civil war and within it the role played by the anarchists and their organizations. This article first appeared in Ratekorrespondenz, the official publication of the Gruppe Internationaler Kommunisten (GIK) based in Holland, before appearing in Paul Mattick's International Council Correspondence in June of that same year.

Special issue of the Spanish anarchosyndicalist journal, La Campana, featuring the ongoing [June 2015] campaign to free Noelia Cotelo, an anarchist prisoner who has been tortured, humiliated and abused in Spanish prisons since 2006, initially convicted of “joy-riding” and petty theft and sentenced to two and a half years in prison, but since sentenced to four more prison terms making her eligible for release in 2017 at the earliest, as a result of her insubordination and indomitable rebellious spirit as she has confronted the unspeakable injustices behind the walls of the class “justice” system.

Some reflections on the latest domestic security legislation passed in Spain (July 2015), known as the “Ley Mordaza” (the Gag Law), which the authors see as an attempt on the part of a faction of the Spanish ruling class to forestall a Greek-style crisis by relying, no longer merely on mass conformism (which would facilitate a “Syriza” option), but on the security forces, to preserve “civil security” and the “rights and liberties” of the citizens, i.e., the Orwellian “right to agree with the State’s orders and the liberty to obey them”, because of the “spreading social conflicts” in cities and rural areas, thus imposing a “State of Emergency” without the need for a “coup d’état”.

A timely warning to the libertarians of Spain from the editors of Argelaga concerning an attempt (June 2015), instigated by certain elements in the anarchist camp sympathetic to “Platformism”, to form a citizens’ political party based on civil society slogans (“the people, “society”, and “the majority” vs. “the evil ‘elite’” or “the one percent”), transmitted via the telegraphic text-message-style communications of a “postmodern”, “upbeat” and “trendy” “lexicon”, crafted for an audience composed of “the pauperized and computer-literate middle class, students and local bureaucrats”, fodder for “reformist militantism of the trade union, municipalist, NGO or para-institutional type”.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 was of enormous international as well as national significance. In this gripping volume, Frances Lannon explains how this internal conflict between democracy and its enemies escalated. Featuring specially commissioned full-color artwork, this study depicts the fighting men of the Nationalist, Republican forces and The International Brigades that strove to take control of Spain alongside their German, Russian and Italian allies.

An obituary published in April 2015 on the occasion of the death of Teresa Rebull (1919-2015)—scion of a well-known libertarian family, sister-in-law of David Rey (a/k/a Daniel Rebull, co-founder of the CNT), textile worker at the age of 12, member of the POUM since 1936, volunteer nurse during the Civil War, participant in the May Days of 1937, prisoner of the Stalinists in a “cheka” in Barcelona, exile in France, participant in the French Resistance, and singer-songwriter of the Catalonian folk music revival of the 1960s, among other things—a remarkable woman and one of last survivors of a generation of women who “tried to win the war by carrying out the revolution”.

On May 21 2015 more than a dozen activists picketed the entrance of the Spanish University Foundation (Fundación Universitaria Española) in Madrid to put pressure on that institution and draw the attention of the public to the labour conflict provoked by the firing of comrade Arturo.

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